Understand Emotional Need

A Motivational Tool for Improving Communication

Emotional needs

If these needs go unfulfilled, we will seek to fill them or risk becoming a broken spirit. Your understanding of it will make it like a tool that will enhance your ability as a speaker.

You may have heard the expression damaged goods in speaking about a person with among other things a broken spirit. It may surprise you to know it is a psychological concept over 3000 years old. Ancient Hebrew and Aramaic writings speak of a man being of no value, like a broken vessel.

The emotional kind of need can be different from psychological needs. The husband’s need of respect from a wife is more of an emotional need where as the need of respect from peers is a psychological need. The emotional need of a woman to be loved by her husband is greater than a psychological need of respect.

Some of the Emotional Needs

Acceptance
accomplishment
acknowledgment
admiration
amusement
appreciation
approval
attention
confidence
forgiveness
fulfillment
goals
important
in control
included, to be
knowledgeable
listened to
love, to give
loved, to be
needed, to be
productivity
recognition
respect
security, physical, emotional, and economic
understood, to be
valued, to be

My nursing career has taught me that if you help people fill their emotional needs when they are patients, they will be very compliant to the medical treatment prescribed by their doctors.

Failure to fill these needs and the patients will result in their need for their nurse continuously all night long. Yet caring for these needs, while seeming like a misuse of time, actually was a time saver.

My many memories of supervisors telling me early in my career that I needed to get my priorities in order offer proof that most do not get this. Then having those same supervisors come back and say that I have the highest patient satisfaction proves to me that it works.

It worked as a manager too. One of my bosses called me in to say that they had never had an entire staff that wanted to work for one manager, before I came along. Although advised to keep doing what I was doing, the boss did not think to ask what I was doing so others would do the same.

Meeting Emotional Needs in the Hospital

Back to early in my nursing career. Within the first few months those same supervisors first telling me to get my priorities in order, they would ask what I was doing with my patients. (My first thought, what have I done wrong?) One said a patient was concerned that I was going to be off for a few days and didn't know what they were going to do. She indicated that was understandable. She said the problem was another patient at the other end of my assignment said the exact same thing. I was encouraged to keep doing what ever I was doing. I was taking care of each patients emotional needs.

The same is true in the world you work in. If you help people fill their emotional needs, they will fill your needs as an employer. Numerous studies have shown that employees want something more than increased wages.

Fill The Audience Needs

How can you fill the emotional needs of an audience?

Like the old saying, you can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time...It is necessary to decide which would be in the best interest to obtain your most wanted response.

If you’re talking to a large group with a broad demographic make up, consider all the emotional liabilities the group would have. If the economy is shaky, the need for economic security may be important. If the economy is secure, then the safety and security of the children would be an emotional tie in.

Then make a connection to that emotional need. Fill it, encourage it, acknowledge it, or empower people to better care for that need themselves.

Consider and example of a speech on the third pillar of great speaking, the way speakers present them selves. The information was so basic that it would have been boring. To capture the interest of the audience, the emotional needs of the audience were spoken to.

The audience was made up of parents, grandparents, or aunts and uncles.

The speech was given as a story. It was told as if the father was narrating the story.

It was explained how the mother and father sat down with their daughter to have a talk.

Dad said, "Do you remember the Rolex Watch I inherited from uncle George when he died?" The daughter affirmed. Dad continued, "You know I have a business meeting in New York City next week. What would people think if I (at this point the speaker rolled up his coat sleeve, exposing his watch and holding his arm out in front of him) walked down the street in NYC this way."

Daughter replied, "That you're gay." (side note: this was only to put some realism and to get the audience to lighten up. They laughed)

Dad, "Ok besides that it would look funny, what would it look like, what would it be inviting?"

Daughter, "You would look stupid."

Dad, "Why?"

Daughter, "Because you would be advertising for it to be stolen."

Dad, "That is so true. Perhaps you can see why mom and I are concerned about your choices in clothing. We don’t mind you being in fashion. Good heavens, we don’t want you to look like your fashion challenged. However, we also don’t want you enslaved to the current fad."

"If you think of it, what does (and father described the style popular in the community) this say your advertising? What do you want to advertise? Do you want people to be looking at your body or looking at you as a person and your personality."

The conclusion went on to describe the importance of dress and grooming in giving a public speech.

The effect was to throw off the audience. By giving an emotional tie in to their children, they gave their attention. On seeing the importance of the message, it was easy to see they needed to look at them selves.

Care for the emotional needs of your audience and they will respond to your message.

Storytelling is an effective way to motivate an audience. Do you know how to tell stories? What did this story do for you? What can your stories do for your audiences?

A True Story about positive speaking and motivation.

Public Speaking Motivation Home Page The Motivation Resource.

Speechmastery.com: The Public Speaking Emotional Need Website

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